


Before

by wizardslexicon



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 20:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3783457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wizardslexicon/pseuds/wizardslexicon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Before, there was no one.<br/>There was no one, and yet, there was existence, bright and burning and glorious existence, all aglow with the force of being. It was an empire spreading by the light-year, all the power that would ever be at the foot of its infinite charge."<br/>A Jasper origin fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before

Before, there was no one.

There was no one, and yet, there was existence, bright and burning and glorious existence, all aglow with the force of being. It was an empire spreading by the light-year, all the power that would ever be at the foot of its infinite charge.

But no one remembers Before. There was no one to recall it, not even a glimmer of consciousness to leave any trace in outside the distant glow behind the stars. Even you do not remember Before, and you remember more than most, because you remember the Flow.

After Before, there was the Flow. The lights and burning were done, and all creation was still charging, only now by kilometers rather than light-years, in spheres of influence limited by charges too small to feel and gravitations too large to resist. There was no you during the Flow, only the joy of being a part and the whole simultaneously, flowing and burning though there was nothing to burn but the Flow. But even the Flow came to an end, after a blissful eternity, and it rose and rose and burst into the freezing beyond, cooling you so torturously fast that you found yourself a “you”, and individual, forming even in that tiny window of time, so small you could hardly detect it.

And then a return to the Flow, only this Flow was sluggish, hardly moving, hardly alive. And more and more of what had once been the Flow piled on top of you, crushing you, molding you, filling you with things that had once been. And so you returned to sleep, a consciousness without consciousness, while cool and wet were introduced to you for the first time and something that was not quite you insinuated itself into your deepest parts.

So it remained. You and your fellows, resting as the earth, slept, separate but the same. You will never hear the term “dumb as rocks”, but if you were to, you would not understand it—even when you were nothing more than a rock in the earth, you existed, you were thinking the deep slow thoughts of a creature alive. Eons, seconds; there was no time for you then. Time, insofar as it was real, consisted of Before, the Flow, and the endless Now.

Until the Burning.

It occurred so suddenly you almost could not classify it as a stage. First, your fellows began to scream. Something had broken them, split them into more “you”s than they had been before, made them lesser. This came from four points around you, and then in front of you. You had no biological component, so you did not know how to fear when the screaming approached you. Around and around your fellows were torn by the invader, and then, quite suddenly, it stopped.

You had not realized how much you missed burning until it happened again. Fire and something else poured from the point of the screaming, melting away everything that had been your fellows and pouring them around you. Somehow this burning was coordinated; you were exposed once more to the freezing beyond in a cavity shaped for this purpose, and your melted fellows were pouring into this mold.

Then something else reached you. And all at once, you were more than you; you were an “I”. You began to think in terms, and you knew these terms were called words, and you knew what “knowledge” itself was. You began to regard your own sentience as you produced an energy you had never known before, more accurately molding your melted fellows (whose screams, somehow, you could no longer hear) into the shape they had been programmed to take.

Programmed. It would take you many years to realize the significance of programming.

When at last you had been formed, you found your new body ( _the physical structure and material substance of an Gem, animal, or plant, living or dead_ said your new mind) moving without your control, pushed by heat from the mold into the greater beyond, which you learned was air as you moved into it.

You escaped your chamber and began to fall.

Falling was a new experience. As your new shape had no biological component, you had no fear, but you saw others like you, in shapes, on the ground far beneath you. They were on their knees. Many, you saw, were being helped up by others, in different looking bodies. You decided that you did not want to be on your knees. It seemed to you more fitting to stand.

You landed on your feet. Looking down at them, they were without detail, contrasting with the infinitely detailed rock your descent had shattered.

“Diamonds preserve us,” you heard. _Diamonds: the ordained rulers of the Gem Homeworld_. “Did she land _standing up_?” You are not sure how to ascertain the location of the speaker, but you work on instinct, turning your body around in the direction of the noise. You have to look down to see the speaker. She is a pale yellow color, with striking golden eyes and an orange-ish tinge to her cheeks; though she is small, she is wide, curvy. She is utterly unlike your blank emptiness. A feeling of shame wells up in you; though you have stood above the others, you are not formed as she is.

“If you could please generate a physical body,” she said, holding a clipboard. Your eyes found more and more objects to identify, so she coughed. You stopped and listened. “Generate a body, please. You may look at me for inspiration, but it is disturbing to see your gem move about on your body for observation. Please fix your gem in one spot and generate a body,” she repeated.

It took you a moment to decide, but when you saw others choosing forms, you began to understand the theme. A central trunk, two sets of matching limbs with appendages on the ends, an ovaltine shape on top with eyes, a nose, and a mouth for speech. Hair, strange as it was, seemed optional.

You fleshed out your new body fairly quickly. It was slimmer than the inspection Gem’s, and much, much taller, with a huge mane of long, wild hair. You fixed your gem where your nose would be; you saw no function for a nose anyway. However, there were many things about your body that you did not specify; you could feel lips, teeth, and bones, and your skin was a light orange, banded with deeper, redder orange tones.

For all this, the inspector seemed satisfied. She looked at you, her eyes began to glow, and she nodded in satisfaction, looking down at her clipboard. Her eyes produced yellow beams of light that traced shapes onto the surface. First was a sketch of your face, which was wide and possessed a harsh, forbidding aesthetic, surrounded by your thick, wild hair. Then she wrote “Jasper” under “gem classification” and made notes you didn’t understand.

“You have a pretty high iron content, Jasper,” she said absently. “That’s your name, by the way—Jasper. Anyway, you probably have a very tough body. I wouldn’t worry about safety, but try to avoid any more falls from that height. Now, go join the line.” It wasn’t hard to see what she was talking about: a huge queue of Gems was gathering on the other side of the rock outcropping you came from.

You took one last look up. A huge machine drilled incessantly into the rock face. More and more Gems dropped down. You decided the place had nothing for you anyway, then turned around and joined the queue.

The heights of the other Gems in the queue varied, but you were by far the tallest, staring over their heads at the ship ( _a vessel, especially a large oceangoing one propelled by sails or engines_ ) the queue was gradually boarding. However, just as many Gems seemed to be leaving the ship as entering. You weren’t particularly patient, but you were curious, watching the goings on. Of especial interest to you were the exercises being done by older Gems at the sides of the line. The earth shook with each clash of their tools, which the information in your gem told you were called weapons.

You reached the ship and climbed the stairs. It took you a few tries, and every time you fell, an older Gem came seemingly from nowhere to hold you up. You resisted the urge to push them away, but only because you could tell they could push harder than you. You are one of the standing people, not the falling ones, you told yourself. Finally you made it into the ship.

Gems swarmed around you, pulling and pushing and _shoving_. You found yourself shoved into a chair, where a Gem in uniform (you could tell because a large white diamond was on the front of her clothing) proceeded to inspect your gem with a number of instruments.

“Curious. Can you smell?” asked the Gem. You frowned. This was a new and pleasant method of physical expression, and you kept doing it. “Not sure? Alright.” Soon enough you were released, and back out onto the surface you went. Many of the other released Gems were wandering around the surface of the planet just like you were.

“Go where you like!” shouted a Gem through a megaphone. “We will be on this planet for another four hundred years running Kindergartens, so there is no rush.” You were not sure how to scale this amount of time, but considering you had been buried in the earth for most of your existence, you didn’t think you would mind a few hundred years like this. Because you were free to go wherever you wanted, you wandered over to the fighters.

The people fighting now could not be more different. One, tall and slender, had a smooth, iridescent white gem in her shoulder, and was dancing around the other fighter with a quarterstaff ( _a weapon consisting of a stout pole 1.8 to 2.4 meters long, tipped with iron_ ) in her hands. The other was curvier than the first, and a light yellow color that grew deeper in tone the closer it was to the gem in her chest. She was wielding a curved sword.

You stood to watch, since no one could obscure your view. Someone nearby was commenting on the battle.

“I’m not sure what Sunstone thought she was playing at,” said one of the watchers. “That Pearl is too strong for her.” Strong ( _having, showing, or able to exert great bodily or muscular power; physically vigorous or robust_ ). You realized, all at once, that this was the quality you were looking for. This was what it meant to stand and not fall to your knees. This was what it meant not to need help on stairs. _Strong_.

You decided you would be strong.

As you watched, Pearl disarmed Sunstone, vaulted over her, and kicked her sharply in the back of the head. Sunstone fell over, but picked herself up and shook Pearl’s hand. Pearl, looking haughty and annoyed at being watched, shifted into some sort of flying creature and took to the sky.

You had never done that before, but you knew you needed to follow Pearl. Screwing your eyes shut, you focused all your power and turned into the same sort of creature Pearl did. Surprised and pleased, you took off, flying after Pearl at top speed.

Catching up to Pearl was easy. She was tall, but you were taller, and so was your bird form. She tried to avoid you, but you followed her until she landed, turning back into her Gem form and running away from you. You, too, turned back into your own form, but you were clumsier. You had a difficult time running; the bird body had instincts, but this one was not programmed to be that efficient of a runner without practice. You lost Pearl in seconds.

By the time you found her again, the plants on the planet had died and returned fifteen times. She was practicing her staff work in the middle of a forest, turning and flying and dancing, with each movement avoiding the falling leaves such that they would not be disturbed even by the air shifts caused by her motions.

“I found you,” you said, as you entered her clearing. She looked back at you, and her eyes narrowed.

“Don’t you know better than to mess with a Pearl, you fledgling?” she asked, putting her staff away. “Leave me alone. I don’t want to see your face.” You frowned. It was your favorite facial expression.

“But you need to teach me how to be strong!” you insisted. “You beat Sunstone. You can beat me, I bet.”

“I will always be able to beat you. Pearls are the Royal Guard of the Diamonds.” You nodded, even though you hadn’t known that before.

“So you can teach me to be better than the others who are new! We only have four hundred years! _Please_!” Finally, she heaved a sigh.

“Fine! Fine. I’ll teach you for the next few centuries or so. But after that, you leave me alone, understood?” You were already nodding. Your body was tall, but so weak compared to her more compact one. There was never a choice in your mind.

“So where do we start?” you asked, eager. “I want to get a bigger, strong body.” Pearl laughed.

“Is that all? Just shapeshift if you want to be more muscular.” You frown again.

“I can turn into things, but changing this....is hard. I can’t do it. I’ve been trying ever since I started looking for you.” She shook her head.

“ _Fledglings_. Fine. Physical training it is, then. But I will say, your body isn’t developing yet, and won’t be for a while. This training might have no effect on your body’s final appearance.”

But under her tutelage, your slim frame began to fill out with powerful muscle, even more than she’d predicted. She marked it up to her intense training, but you knew better; your body was getting stronger, and her training was getting easier, even as she struggled to keep up with you. When you began training, you only hurt yourself when you rammed againt rock faces at your top speed. Fifty years later, you could run _into_ rock faces without hurting yourself at all. No amount of muscle could do that.

What Pearl did manage to teach you was how to fight other people. While you couldn’t figure out how your weapon was summoned, you learned to fight with your body. And, when she had been training you for a hundred and seventy years, you landed a blow on her that knocked her across the clearing and through several trees.

After that, she said you had to stop sparring with her. She claimed that if she fought more seriously, she might kill you, but you knew this was not a possibility. In a fit of anger, you ran around the planet until you encountered another Gem. Still furious, you grabbed her by the shoulders, almost laughing at her pathetic size compared to yours.

“What is the word for a thing that is said, but does not exist in reality?” you asked, staring into the smaller Gem’s eyes.

“A...a lie?” You let out a sigh of deep satisfaction and began the long run back to Pearl’s clearing. It took you months, just as the trip away had, but you were patient, and your anger had been soothed. Now you were simply confident. Halfway through the run, you discovered that you could move even faster if you rolled into a ball, shaving your return time in half. When you arrived at Pearl’s clearing, she was meditating.

“Pearl!” you shouted; she flinched, then stood and turned to look at you.

“Yes?”

“You spoke lies! You said it was for my safety! You are just afraid, because I am stronger than you.” Speaking the words took an effort you’d never exerted before, but you felt light, free. Strong.

“How dare you?” she asked, but she did not deny it. Disgusted with her weakness, you turned your back to her and began to walk away, without a single fear for your safety. As you did, you heard her summon her weapon and run after your back. With nothing but supreme confidence in your power and desire to subjugate in your heart, you turned around to face her, and your gem began to glow.

The helmet felt heavy, but perfect on your head, a glass visor protecting your eyes. It extended in the top into a hammer-like protrusion, which held off Pearl’s quarterstaff. With one hand, you picked her up; with the other, you punched her in the chest. She flew away from you, and you walked away, laughing.

You were strong.

**Author's Note:**

> The yellow gem inspector is Sphene.


End file.
